The Tears of Nanjing: Thoughts and Reflections on the Nanjing Massacre

In memory of the 300,000 Chinese murdered during the Nanjing Massacre.

The Western history textbooks usually place the official start of World War II as September 1st 1939, the day Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The Nazis’ rampage and genocidal policies resulted in unimaginable horror and tragedy by the end of the war in 1945. The deaths of more than 6 million Jews in the Holocaust have always been a focal point of 20th century history and serves as a reminder to future generations of the gross extent of man’s cruelty towards his fellow men. The Nazi ideology was subsequently outlawed in most European countries. German governments have since made official apologies to the Jewish people and paid billions in reparation. Nowadays many countries have enacted legislation explicitly criminalizing Nazism or any forms of expression related to Nazism (such as the Hitler salute). The Holocaust is a part of human history entrenched in Western education. Ever since Grade 4, the Holocaust has been embedded in the school curriculum. We saw movies such as Schindler’s List and The Pianist and read books such as Number the Stars and the Diary of Anne Frank. The Holocaust allowed us to peer into the dark side of humanity, the dehumanizing consequences of mass racism and the power that ideology can have on people’s minds within a certain societal context.

What is often ignored in Western education curriculum, and unknown to Western society in general, is the fact that War in Asia had already erupted by 1937 with the Japanese invasion of China and the subsequent takeover of the then capital city of Nanjing, 4 entire years before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Japanese expansionism had already begun by the early 1930s with the occupation of the northeastern part of China and the establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo. Full scare war between the Empire of Japan and the Republic of China officially began by July 1937 following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. By August of 1937, the Japanese launched a full scale assault on the city of Shanghai. They were met with heavy resistance from the Chinese Nationalist army but eventually captured the city after weeks of brutal fighting. By then, the then-leader of China, Chiang Kai Shek, knew that the Japanese’s eventual target would be Nanjing. Knowing that the city would be lost, Chiang Kai Shek pulled out and relocated his government to Wuhan and later Chongqing. He left with most of the Nationalist army in preparation for future battles, leaving only a small, disorganized and greatly undersupplied battalion of soldiers left to defend Nanking. The Japanese slowly made their way to Nanjing after the fall of Shanghai.

Nanjing was a prosperous and splendid city prior to the Japanese attacks located right by the life-giving waters of the Yangtze River. Survivors of the Nanjing Massacre later recount how “the boulevards of Nanjing were lined with parasol trees. It was beautiful.” Both my grandmother and grandfather(on my father's side) lived in Nanjing at that time. My grandmother would tell me how Nanjing was subjected to endless air raids during the summer of 1937. The sirens blared constantly, be it day or night, and they would sprint towards the bombs shelters for protection. Both my grandparents fled to Chongqing along with Chiang’s government. By the time Chiang retreated, most of the foreigners and diplomatic officials have also left the city, fully aware of the impending doom. Despite the explosion of panic and chaos surrounding the city at that time, a group of 15 brave Westerners, mostly American missionaries and European businessmen, created a two square mile area known as the Nanjing Safety Zone in order to receive all refugees fleeing from Shanghai and the counties around Nanjing as well as the hundreds of thousands of poor people who couldn’t afford to leave Nanjing. These brave Westerners’ selfless actions in the next four months would eventually determine the lives of more than 250, 000 people.

The most notable ones included John Rabe, the head of the Safety Zone known as the Oskar Schindler of Nanjing who used his political influence to save the lives of thousands of Chinese civilians, Dr. Robert Wilson, the only Western surgeon left in Nanjing at that time, and Minnie Vautrin, a courageous American missionary and Dean of Ginling Girls College who hid thousands of girls in her College while using her American status to prevent Japanese incursions into the zone. John Rabe has been the subject of numerous movies including a recent German film that won several top German Film Awards. His life eerily paralleled that of Oskar Schindler. He was the head of Siemens Corporation’s subsidiary in Nanjing and as a member of the Nazi Party, used his Nazi credentials to negotiate with the occupying Japanese forces allied at the time with Nazi Germany and would not risk hurting a German citizen. He used his Nazi seal to ward off Japanese soldiers who tried to sneak into the Safety Zone in order to abduct Chinese girls. During the air raids on Nanjing, Rabe allowed hundreds of Chinese people to stay in his yard where he set up a huge Nazi flag so that the bombers would see it and not bomb it. The amount of psychological stress, trauma and horror that the Westerners underwent during the three months following the fall of Nanjing are all recorded in gruesome detail in diaries and letters to family.

The Japanese arrived outside the city walls on December 8, 1937. After 5 days of fighting with the remaining Nationalist army, the wall was breached. The Chinese army remaining in Nanjing were vastly outnumbered and outmatched by the superior Japanese forces and weaponry. After the city fell on December 13, 1937, the Chinese army surrendered their weapons and hoped to be treated with mercy by the occupying Japanese forces. They couldn’t have been more wrong. The events that followed later became known in history as the Nanjing Massacre.

Nanjing was embroiled in total chaos and lawlessness. The state of chaos and anarchy allowed the Japanese army to do whatever they wanted to in the city. The feeling of domination and power over the civilians of Nanjing and the powerless Chinese soldiers who have given up arms eventually overwhelmed the Japanese soldiers who saw Chinese people as inherently inferior. The sense of power they felt eventually led them to pillage the entire city and commit gruesome atrocities that numb the human conscience. The Japanese Army’s motto at the time was: “Kill All, Loot All, Burn All”. During the occupation of Nanjing, the Japanese army committed a gross range of atrocities in the city which included, but were not limited to, raping women to death, burying civilians and prisoners of war alive, mass executions, beheadings, and the murdering of entire families from children to the old and infirm. Many of the soldiers who gave up their arms stole civilian clothes in order to avoid capture. John Rabe was given assurance by Japanese military officials that soldiers who have given up arms would be spared. Yet this assurance was futile. The Japanese soldiers summarily rounded up thousands of people from the Nanjing Safety Zone whom they accused of being soldiers disguised in civilian clothing, tied them up in groups and led them to the banks of the Yangtze River for mass execution. These groups of men were lined up along the banks of the Yangtze and machine gunned. Those who did not die from gunfire were later bayoneted or beheaded by Japanese soldiers. A Japanese soldier recalled seeing “rows and rows of dead body mountains.”

The masses of dead bodies were later dumped into the waters of the Yangtze River. It was said that the waters of the Yangtze were dyed crimson red with blood as the bodies were collectively thrown into the river. The Yangtze River, for thousands of years the lifeline of Chinese Civilization, had suddenly become the River Styx of death, its life-giving waters now littered with thousands of thousands of dead bodies. The putrid smell, the ghastly sight, and the deafening cries of immeasurable pain and suffering that were everywhere around the city are utterly unimaginable to the human mind. Yet it happened and records of its happening exist in countless photographs and films recorded by the Westerners in Nanjing.

There was also a famous contest between two Japanese soldiers to be the first one to behead 100 Chinese civilians. A photograph of these two soldiers smiling triumphantly about their barbaric deeds was shown on the front page of many Japanese newspapers. In fact, many Japanese soldiers had a preference for using swords to cut off the heads of Chinese victims. There are pictures showing rows and rows of human heads lined up neatly or held by Japanese soldiers as trophies. Chinese captives were also used as target practice for Japanese bayonets. These victims were usually tied to a post and repeatedly stabbed until all that remained was a lifeless heap of flesh drenched in blood bearing little resemblance to the form of a human being. Such images will remain ingratiated in my memory forever.

The Nanjing Massacre was also known as the Rape of Nanjing due to the fact that the Japanese army raped close to 20,000 women during the 3 months following the fall of Nanjing. Japanese soldiers raped girls as young as 10 and old women as old as 60. Most of the rape victims did not survive. Some were gangraped to death, and others bayoneted or shot after being raped. None were spared, not even the pregnant women. Pregnant women would be raped and their stomach bayoneted so that the human foetuses in the womb fell out and were impaled on swords. Most girls shaved their heads and blackened their faces in order to avoid being raped. As Minnie Vautrin writes in her diary: “they would capture dozens of young girls and line them up, and they would choose the pretty ones.” Men were forced to rape their family members in front of Japanese soldiers. There were also incidents of men being forced to rape dead bodies lying on the street.

The Nanjing Massacre remains a dark and tragic chapter in world history that is known to almost every person of Chinese descent, just like the Holocaust is to the Jewish people. Yet unlike the Holocaust, the Massacre, along with the entire Chinese theatre of war, is largely unknown and virtually ignored in Western education and society. Moreover, the Japanese government have never issued an official apology to the Chinese people nor has it made any form of state reparation for the massive casualties suffered in Nanjing. The Imperial family of Japan, following the end of the war, were granted immunity by General MacArthur from criminal prosecution. The political blanket shielded the Imperial family permanently, many of whom bear direct command responsibility for the events in Nanjing. Prince Asaka, Emperor Hirohito’s uncle, was the officer in charge of the final assault on Nanjing and directly issued an order to his soldiers to “kill all captives”. There is also no question that Emperor Hirohito was implicated in the Massacre as there is incontrovertible proof that he personally ratified a proposition by the Japanese army to “remove the constraints of international law on the treatment of Chinese prisoners.” Members of the Imperial Army, some bearing full responsibility for the actions of soldiers during the occupation in Nanjing, were never prosecuted and lived until old age.

The fates of many of the Westerners saviours whose actions saved hundreds of thousands of lives were ultimately tragic. John Rabe, wrote many letters to Hitler urging him to respond to the situation in Nanjing but to no avail. Upon returning to Germany, he showed video footage of the massacre to German officials but due to Nazi Germany’s alliance with the Empire of Japan, his pleas were universally rejected by the Nazis. His documentaries of the massacre were later confiscated by the Gestapo. After the war, he was arrested by Soviets for his Nazi membership and subsequently lived in relative poverty before dying of a stroke in 1950. The Chinese people and the Nanjing government, forever thankful to this savior from heaven, sent him monthly food parcels and money to support him in his state of destitution. The American missionary Minnie Vautrin, known to the Chinese people as the Goddess of Nanjing, suffered severe psychological trauma after witnessing the countless appalling atrocities in Nanjing. In her diary, she expressed a deep sense of guilt about not being able to save more lives. Tormented by the horrible visions that were imprinted in her memories, Vautrin committed suicide in 1941.

Japanese school textbooks have largely muted the importance of the Nanjing Massacre in history, some even going as far as to delete it altogether. There still exist groups of Japanese people who deny that the massacre ever occurred. Their claim is that the Japanese army simply marched through Nanjing in peace, that the only ones whom they’ve killed are soldiers who’ve resisted. Even today, 14 of the war criminals sentenced at the International Military Tribunal of the Far East, including the Prime Minister of Japan during the war Hideki Tojo, are still enshrined today in the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. One can easily imagine the consequences if monuments enshrining Nazi military officials and war criminals were erected in the middle of Berlin. The incontrovertible facts, however, are that more than 300,000 people lost their lives in the few months following the fall of Nanjing. The Japanese army committed acts of sheer barbarism and cruelty towards Chinese civilians and prisoners of war that are as unfathomable to human conscience as the mass killings of Jews during the Holocaust. The Nanjing Massacre is often treated as a subject of political controversy. I don't think it should be. Just like the Holocaust, a subject matter like this should be moved out of the political spectrum and remembered as a lesson from history of the possible extent and magnitude of man’s gross inhumanity towards his fellow men. The Nanjing Massacre is by no means an isolated event. Rather, such massacres have occurred again and again throughout history and are by no means limited to one nation. Yet the sheer magnitude of this event can serve as an effective warning sign for future generations. Even if war is a human phenomenon that can never be eliminated, then at least lessons from history can strike the conscience of men who are fighting wars and allow them to contemplate questions of morality.

The Nanjing Massacre is to the Chinese people what the Holocaust is to the Jews, what the Rwandan Genocide is to the Tutsis, what the Katyn massacre is to the Poles. And just like the Rwandan Genocide, the world at the time took little note of the Nanjing Massacre. And what is even worse is the still-existing neglect and relative lack of knowledge of this event in the world. It is a huge, burning scar that Chinese people have borne ever since World War II and remains a lightning rod of discordance in Sino-Japanese relations.

The Nanjing Massacre has always been a subject matter of great seriousness and personal significance to me. I have read many books and saw many film documentaries on the subject matter. They have often left me in a state of depression and sadness for days. Iris Chang’s brilliant novel, The Rape of Nanking, is a great starting point for any reader interested in the subject. It contains detailed descriptions of the events in Nanjing and various accounts of survivors. The interviews with survivors of the massacre contained in film documentaries also describe in excruciating detail the excruciating horror they went through. I strongly recommend everyone to watch the wonderful American-made documentary simply titled “Nanking”. It contains anecdotes from survivors and readings of diaries written by the Westerners present during the Nanjing Massacre. One anecdote that forever scarred me is one by a survivor 30 minutes into the film that is both graphic and emotionally draining. The Nanjing Massacre has also been the subject of many films, two of which were made quite recently. One is a German production telling the story of John Rabe during the Massacre that is simply titled “John Rabe”. It is a very powerful movie and its final scene is reminiscent of the one in Schindler’s List where the Schindler Jews express their gratitude towards Oskar Schindler’s heroic acts. The other is the graphic Chinese film titled 南京！南京! (Nanjing! Nanjing! or City of Life and Death in English) by the Chinese filmmaker Lu Chuan, filmed in stark black and white featuring many memorable scenes vividly recreating the horror and enormous despair of the people of Nanjing in the dark winter of 1937. It is my firm and unequivocal hope that books such as Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking and films such as Nanking, John Rabe and南京！南京! would be shown in schools across the world alongside Schindler’s List, The Pianist and The Diary of Anne Frank.

In 2008, I went to China and paid a visit to Nanjing. The city is highly modernized now, with tall skyscrapers and busy traffic. Nanjing remains a beautiful city, its streets still flanked on both sides by those famous lush green parasol trees. The sullen brown city walls, however, remain and circle the vicinity of the main city. The still-standing city walls serve as a constant reminder for any visitor to Nanjing of the horrors that occurred there in the winter of 1937. I could not help but think of the horrifying black and white images depicting dead bodies of innocent victims, young and old, laying motionless and stone cold near those mighty walls whenever I turned to look at them. I paid a visit to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall but unfortunately the Museum was undergoing construction the day I went and was closed. It is however a destination that every visitor to Nanjing should pay a visit to. I saw old family relatives residing in Nanjing including my grandmother’s aunt who is now almost 100 years old. She went through the war, escaping to Chongqing along with my grandmother before the Japanese occupation of Nanjing. I wanted to ask her about her experiences yet was afraid to as it was undoubtedly a traumatic one. I left Nanjing, my ancestral hometown, after a three day stay. As I sat quietly on the train gliding out of the city across the Yangtze River, I looked out the clear windowpane and stared deeply into the torrential waters of the Yangtze. At that moment, the putrid smell, the ghastly sight, and the deafening cries of immeasurable pain and suffering that were there 70 years ago once again resurfaced in my mind. I closed my eyes as they watered with tears.